Everybody Owns Themselves

I have posted this simple idea on two different Danish sites and the readers didn’t like it at all! But here it is again:

EVERY SINGLE PERSON OWN HIM- OR HERSELF!

Well, I don’t see any alternative to this statement, except to accept slavery. If you don’t own yourself, then who does? Well, somebody else, obviously.

And this somebody else decides how you should spend your life, what you should be doing, and what compensation (if any) you should receive for this.

So why don’t people like the idea of self-ownership? You would think it was a nice enough idea that you own yourself.

But maybe people don’t like the idea that their neighbours can’t be ruled. And then they conveniently forget that by the same token their neighbours can’t rule them.

They dislike the idea that they don’t have a right to the life, and the product of the life, of everybody else. And they forget that by the same token, everybody else has a right to their lives, and to the product of their lives.

So I guess this is why people don’t like the idea of self-ownership: Because they prefer the status quo, which is “known” and considered “safe”, to the unknown – and because they imagine that in a society where self-ownership is not generally recognized they will have to work for others some of the time, but others will also have to work for them more of the time. So they will come out a bit ahead.

Problem is, I don’t think anybody stands to gain in the long run by giving up their right to self-ownership and self-determination.